XGI Technology Shows Off Volari 8300

XGI Technology, a designer of graphics processors who is based in Taipei, Taiwan, showcased at CeBIT 2005 its latest technology – the code-named XG47 graphics processor which is expected to be marketed under Volari 8300 brand-name. The chip is designed for value and mobile applications, but it is unclear who, except XGI itself will sell the product.

XGI Volari 8300 prototype

As previously reported, XGI Technology received its XG47 value graphics processing unit for PCI Express systems from the packaging fab just days ago, the chip on the Volari 8300 board the company showcased at CeBIT was made on the 8th week of 2005. This may imply that commercial availability of XGI Volari 8300 is not around the corner, as the company may want to make another revision of the core in order to optimize yields, performance and also develop the print circuit board for the commercial product.

XGI Volari 8300 graphics chip

The Volari 8300 processor contains 40 million transistors and incorporates 2x2 pixel pipelines that can perform either 4 pixel shader operations or 8 depth/stencil operations per clock as well as 2 vertex processors. XGI’s XG47 will have 64-bit memory controller and support for different types of displays and their interconnections, including CRT, DVI, LVDS and TV-Out. The chip is to be made using UMC’s 0.13 micron process technology and will run at up to 350MHz speed. The XG47 is a DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2.0 compliant chip developed by ex-Trident team at XGI.

The product is mainly intended for mobile and value systems: it sports energy presuming technologies and has only 7.5W maximum power consumption as well as capability to use system memory as frame-buffer. Nevertheless, the chip sports such caps as HDTV output as well as advanced video engine to improve video quality, which has been a feature of high-end graphics cards.

The next product from XGI is XG45, a chip developed by ex-SiS graphics architects that will support Shader Model 3.0 and is projected to be made using 90nm process technology. XGI does not indicate much details about the product, but says it will be showcased at Computex Taipei 2005 in June.